The Black Bat #1Review

Dynamite has been doing killer stuff with their recent pulp hero revival. They've mined the top talent and given some of the pulp era's most popular characters new series and spins. Now, they are starting to dig a little deeper, pulling out characters that many fans are not familiar with, such as the Black Bat. It'd be easy to write this off as a ripoff of characters like Daredevil and Batman, but you have to remember that he predates the Man without Fear and launched at roughly the same time as the Dark Knight. The Black Bat is old-school, and this comic book proves it. That's all fine and dandy, but the question is, will anybody care?

The setup of this character is interesting; Black Bat is a blind lawyer that is taking up a violent vigilante career to right the wrongs he committed in the courtroom. Writer Brian Buccellato plays this story fairly straight, but he tells it in far too convoluted of a manner. Everything jumps back and forth too much, scenes slip forward in time then back again. It shouldn't be this complicated, especially since we all kinda know stories just like this one. The story doesn't have twists and turns, but its structure does.

The art, provided by Ronan Cliquet, is mostly pretty great. Some of the action is as jumbled as the script, but in general this is a smooth ride from start to finish. Really, the biggest problem is that Black Bat never looks as cool as he does on all those covers Dynamite provides. Far from it, in fact. In the comic he just kinda looks like a dude in coat and a mask. But man, look at Marcos Martin's cover and try telling us this isn't a bad mother of a character. Hopefully the comic will kick it up a notch and match those gorgeous covers.

A classic pulp from the 30's returns in this modern take on a seminal character that inspired several well-known comic icons. Tony Quinn is a brash Defense Attorney to the mob who compromises his ethics for financial gain.